Colorado's Republican primary for governor may not be decided until Thursday at the earliest

The Republican primary for Colorado governor remains too close to call almost a week after the election.

Victor Marx -- who runs a ministry in southern Colorado -- currently leads State Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer by 1,950 votes. State Rep. Scott Bottoms is a distant third in the race. But there are still thousands of votes yet to be counted.

Most of them are due to missing or mismatched signatures. When you send your ballot in, election officials verify that the signature on the envelope matches the one that they have on file.

When it doesn't, they notify you by mail and -- if you provided your email and cellphone number when you registered to vote -- by phone, text, and email.

Most clerks also post your name online and campaigns have dozens of volunteers who will even come to your door. You have until Wednesday at midnight to fix your signature.

If you don't, your ballot won't be counted but, the letters, calls, and emails will keep coming. By law, counties must contact voters with missing or mismatched signatures to protect against voter fraud.

There are about 11,600 ballots that have still have signature discrepancies. It's unclear how many of them are Republican ballots but the Colorado Clerk's Association says, based on previous elections, only about 30% of them will likely be fixed by Wednesday at midnight, especially since this year's primary happened right before a holiday weekend.

In addition to the ballots with signature discrepancies, clerks have also withheld at least a couple thousand ballots to preserve the anonymity of the votes.

Military and overseas voters also have until Wednesday at midnight to get their ballots in and, there are some outstanding ballots that were damaged or otherwise unreadable that judges are still examining.

We should know the winner of the Republican primary for governor by Thursday unless the race results in a recount. That could take another week. An automatic recount is triggered when the number of votes separating the candidates is less than .5% of the total votes cast for the top vote getter. The winner of the race will take on Democrat Phil Weiser and unaffiliated Greg Lopez in the general election. Lopez left the Republican Party earlier this year to run for governor as an unaffiliated candidate. Current Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, is term-limited.